Mode is a Free and Intuitive Collaboration Platform for Every Data Scientist (Supports SQL, Python and R!)

Overview

• Mode is a data science platform that brings together a SQL editor, Python notebook, and R
• You can perform data visualization, create charts and dashboards, and then share your analysis with a click
• The platform is free to use and also has options for learning SQL and Python

Introduction

Collaboration is key in data science. It’s a team game and being able to share your model with your team or clients is imperative in any data science project. GitHub is of the most popular collaboration platforms leveraged by data scientists these days but it can be a little intimidating to learn for a newcomer.

Mode, a browser-based data science collaboration platform by Mode Analytics, has been designed to work in such a way that it streamlines with the way a data scientists thinks. It allows you to connect to almost any type of database, analyse the dataset with the tool of your choice, and makes sharing a breeze.

Talking about databases, Mode has a remarkably diverse set of options that allow you to connect and get your data from anywhere. When you sign up on the site (which is free, by the way), the first option you will see is a list of databases which you can connect to, in order to import your data. Microsoft Azure SQL, Amazon Redshift, Hive, Oracle, MySQL and SQL Server are just some of the many options available. Check out the below image to see the list in full:

When it comes to actually getting into the data science tasks, like data cleaning and preparation, visualization, building your model and validation, Mode offers a variety of languages to do this. SQL is ideal for initial data collection, while R and Python are of course the go-to model building tools for most data scientists these days.

Mode also gives you the option to build charts and dashboards in a matter of seconds. Apart from the usual popular data visualization libraries like R’s ‘ggplot2’ and python’s ‘matplotlib’, Mode has it’s own drag-and-drop tool that you can use if coding is not to your taste.

One of the things that makes Mode unique is that every project you create comes with it’s own URL. This makes sharing with your team, or a client, a whole lot easier. The analysis that you perform will stay on the same URL regardless of updates and modifications done over time.

If you’re new to data science, or don’t know a specific language or tool, the platform also gives you plenty of free tutorials to learn from. The team has also posted a few examples that you can clone so you don’t need to build or start from scratch. And as we mentioned, it’s free!

Check out the below video from the company exploring Mode:

Our take on this

I took Mode for a spin and was pretty impressed with the overall platform. It’s really lightweight since it’s a browser-based platform and it’s pretty intuitive. The diverse database options and switching between tools is obviously a unique selling point for Mode. I especially liked the SQL and python learning resources.

They have recently added R support as well last month so we are expecting to see them launch a learning platform for this language as well. Do let us know in the comments below if you are planning to use this awesome tool.

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Pranav Dar 10 May 2019

Senior Editor at Analytics Vidhya. Data visualization practitioner who loves reading and delving deeper into the data science and machine learning arts. Always looking for new ways to improve processes using ML and AI.